Flickr is another crucial low budget avenue for effective marketing. According to Matt McGee who wrote "How to Market on Flickr", owned by Yahoo!, Flickr provides free photo sharing and a number of related services for users with any level of experience. Flickr is one of the fastest-growing photo sharing community sites on the web with a very strong and active user base. Most users of Flickr simply upload a photo, add the photo to a personal photo album, and then share the photo in related groups the person has joined. With this emphasized, posting to groups is the most effective way to share your photos and gain exposure.
As Flickr prohibits the use of the service for any commercial activity, posting a photo specifically for the purposes of advertising one's company, products, or services will cause the community to be shut down. Therefore, individuals need to actively contribute to the Flickr community through indirect marketing exposure.
One's web site address should be used as one's Flickr screen name. In doing this, one's screen name will be attached to everything one does on Flickr including photos one uploads and messages one posts in a Group discussion. With each photo one uploads, one should write appropriate informative text while adding keywords that describe the photo and a description of the image addressing one's company name, location, and web site address.
One's Flickr profile should be used in an informative way to advertise one's company, products, or services. One can also make one's “Buddy Icon” in the profile system one's company logo. One should upload quality photos of one's products/services, and things related to one's business.
One should find, join, and share one's photos in appropriate groups. For this matter, one should be sure to find and join any groups related to one's geographic location including city, nearby cities, and one's state so one can increase one's reach to local audience.
One should be active in the Flickr community in several ways. One way to do this is by commenting on other photos one likes. In addition, one should add photos to one's “Favorites” list. Furthermore, one should respond and initiate discussions in one's groups. Every time a person does one of these activities, one's screen name will appear with one's comment, with one's discussion posts, and so on providing free advertising especially if one uses one's URL as one's screen name. In addition, one should reference and link considerably from one's web site to one's Flickr account because search engine crawlers generally follow a prominent link from one's web site to one's Flickr photos, increasing potential matches for search engine users.
When Flickr is used correctly it can be an effective tool for marketing one's small business. The most crucial aspect of its success is to be an active and responsible member while avoiding the usage of direct clear marketing in photos, comments, discussions, and so forth.
For more information and tactics from Matt McGee's article titled "How to Market on Flickr" click here: http://www.smallbusinesssem.com/articles/marketing-on-flickr/
Three of my photos in my slide show represent marketing opportunities for four different businesses. When you go to my slide show for example, one will find that I placed notes, tags, descriptions and titles for the Paris, Bellagio, Flamingo, and Rio Resort and Casino.
